there's a fifth Uckelman!

[aryanhwy]

So, Joel's grandfather emigrated to the US from Germany when he was in his 30's; he had one son and two daughters. His son (my father in law) married and had one son (my husband). Joel's grandparents are now dead, so that meant that prior to our moving over here, there were precisely four Uckelmans in the U.S. - me, my husband, and my inlaws. I've always counted that as one of the added bonuses of married life. I like having such an uncommon name.

But we've found a fifth! There's an article in The Onion (America's Finest News Source) about one Dick Uckelman.

I gotta wonder...they can't have just made up this name out of thin air. So if they got it from somewhere, they probably got it from us... It's not horribly improbable, as one of the people on the business staff of the paper is the son of my dentist.

Ah, I miss The Onion, it was one of the highlights of the week in Madison. Good stuff. It had the only horoscope I ever read, and "Savage Love" has far more good advice in his columns than a lot of people would give him credit for.

And on the subject of unique names, it occured to me this evening that the last time I went googling for information about other Uckelmans (Uckelmen? Uckelwomen?) in Germany, they all uniformly spelled their name with two n's. Could it be...am I one of only four Uckelmans in the WORLD? Now that would be cool.

Comments

[baron-berwyn.livejournal.com]

For a moment there I thought maybe you were foreshadowing a blessed event.

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

Not yet - still gotta convince Joel that such an event, should it happen, would be blessed!

[mariedeblois.livejournal.com]

Side note: savagelove
Side note redux: onion_aries (or whichever matches your birthday, as I haven't at hand)

I enjoy unique names ... mine's one. Only two people with it anywhere.

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

Oooh. Oooh. I will have to check both of these out. (And it's Taurus, just by a day or two - and the only reason I know this is because of the Onion. :))

[ursula]

Savage Love is syndicated out of Seattle. I read it at thestranger.com (Dan Savage also writes news for the Stranger).

[kontzel.livejournal.com]

Dan Savage is wonderfully witty. :) He is a sometimes contributor to This American Life which I also love. :)

[thebronwen.livejournal.com]

My last name (Pomroy) is derived from "Pomeroy," the ones who owned the castle in England. I guess that some of them changed the spelling to be more "colonial" when they came to the US. (The "Pomroy" branch was disowned by the rest of the Pomeroy family, I'm told.) Some of the Pomeroy money still made it over here and lasted a while - there even used to be a Pomroy mansion in St. Paul (of which we have the last remaining piece of furniture!) I've been told that Ben's great great grandfather squandered the last remnants of the "fortune" on gambling, booze, and women.

So maybe I didn't marry an actual "Prince Charming" (even though he is one to me) but I did marry into a line that came from Nobility at one point (a fact that Ben had to rub in just a bit when we got married, being we had the fantasy/period wedding and all.) As far as I know the Ziemann's don't have much of a history worth noting. I keep looking every so often, though, because I find the whole thing facinating. I guess it's part of the history buff in me.